Frozen
by Grav
Summary: When Maria gets an alert about a security breach at a derelict lab in the Yukon, she goes to put it right.
1. Chapter 1

**AN**: There was that trope thing for stories you weren't going to write. And, technically, this is in the spirit of that, since I stole it from the prompt I gave to **tielan**. Unbetaed flashfic is unbetaed.

**Disclaimer**: Not mine, no profit

**Spoilers**: The movie

**Characters**: Maria Hill, Steve Rogers

**Rating**: Teen? For now.

**Summary**: When Maria gets an alert about a security breach at a derelict lab in the Yukon, she goes to put it right.

* * *

**Frozen**

The red light on Maria's desk blinks for almost ten seconds before she notices it. Well, before she acknowledges it, anyway. Far be it from her to shirk her duties, but sometimes she really wishes other people were as good at her job as she is.

She activates her comm before Fury is finished his sentence, buzzing in her ear like an over-worked bee, and assures him she's got it. She's not quite fast enough de-activating it, though, because she hears him quite clearly when he says "Take Rogers", and now she's lost plausible deniability. She sighs and allows herself exactly two and a half seconds to lament her lot in life before she issues the appropriate calls and heads down to the armory for her gear. She's many things, and even more now that she's wrangling various permutations of the Avengers two times a week, but she's not one to wallow for long. Plus, this one, this one is personal.

Rogers is in the jet when she gets there, priming the engines like paint by number because the new tech doesn't come naturally quite yet (and also because, according to Stark, he crashed the only plane he ever flew. Maria doesn't usually listen to Stark, as a general rule, but on this one occasion, she'll admit at least privately that he might be on to something).

"Agent Hill," Rogers nods as she takes her chair and begins the double check. He's in uniform, but his cap is down. The shield is lying down on top of his pack, next to hers on the bench. "Where are we headed?"

"The Yukon," she tells him. "I'm inputting the coordinates now. I hope you packed warm, Captain."

"The cold doesn't make a huge impact on me, Agent," Rogers says. "As long as I keep moving."

"Noted," she says. She adds it to the list she keeps, the one that lists all their strengths and weaknesses, just in case.

Rogers is not much of a talker, so it's all business until they're in the air, and then he sets the autopilot and takes out a sketchpad. Maria passes the time looking at maps, even though the floorplan of the place they're headed might as well be burned into her brain.

"So," says Rogers after a long time. "What exactly are we in for? I mean, your orders were pretty brief. And you're looking at that datapad like you're planning something very big."

"It's an old SHIELD lab," Maria says. "From before Fury's time. Things were a little different then."

"Different, how?" Rogers asks.

"There were experiments Fury didn't like." That's putting it mildly. "I didn't like them much either. Putting a stop to it was one of the few things we've ever fully agreed on."

"And a proximity alarm has been triggered?" Rogers asks.

"Last time it was the caribou migration," Maria admits. "But I have to be sure."

Rogers doesn't say anything, but Maria realizes that this probably means they finally have something in common. The Avengers are a mess of personal motivations and old grudges. Her professionalism is a bit slippery when it comes to the Yukon lab, but her determination is adamant. Rogers will back her, completely, just because it's something on her conscience.

Rogers goes back to his sketchbook and Maria does her best to focus. Usually she'd look out the window, but the SHIELD jet flies so fast it would only make her nauseated. She'd know that Rogers could draw. It was in his file, and Phil had told her about eighteen times in the year between finding his shield and finding the rest of him. Somehow it makes him smaller, having a normal hobby. Stark has hobbies, but they aren't normal. Banner won't let himself settle down long enough, and Barton and Romanov aren't exactly the puttering type. Maria does her best not to think about what Thor gets up to. But Rogers draws, and all of a sudden he's human.

She's saved from her own thoughts when the computer alert begins to beep, notifying them that they're coming up on their destination. Rogers puts the book away and leans forward to the control. Stark would say something stupid about now, but Maria isn't even tempted. Rogers lands by the book, and Maria undoes her straps to start wrestling into her cold weather gear while he does the post-flight, and then the pre-flight, in case they have to leave in a hurry.

"Just in case it's not caribou this time," he says, when he catches her looking.

"Good thinking, Captain," she says, which is the sort of thing one says when one has no idea what to say.

He grabs his pack and she pulls out her gun, and they go, falling into formation. Rogers was in the army too, she remembers: he was a soldier before the others were, literally and metaphorically. He follows her lead when she takes point, using the shield to cover them both as they cross from the helipad to the doors.

She puts her code in, the stealth one that won't actually deactivate anything. She'll have to unlock everything manually when they get inside, but that's procedure, and tells Rogers as much.

"I'm right behind you, Agent," is his only reply.

There are six doors before they can get to the control room, but they only get as far as the third one before they find out that it is not, in fact, caribou that have set off the alarm.

It is, in fact, several very well armed commandos, with tech that Maria does not recognize, even though she'd have to admit that she didn't get a particularly good look at any of it, what with all the gunfire.

* * *

TBC...


	2. Chapter 2

Rogers has produced a gun of his own, and placed himself in front of her, directly in the line of fire. She doesn't mind: he's the one with the shield, after all. He does the same thing to Natasha in a firefight. Hell, he does the same thing to Stark. He's laying down enough fire that Maria can take a moment to think between her own rounds, and by the time she's reaching for her third magazine, she has a plan.

"We're falling back," she shouts.

"Good," he replies, and shifts so that they can both retreat without losing the cover of the shield.

Maria leads him backwards, both of them still firing, until they reach the elevator shaft. The lab has several layers, all built into the Precambrian rock, so they can go up and still be underground. She pulls out her grappler and fires upwards, smiling with relief when the hook catches on something.

"Rogers," she says, calling him to test it. The cable is going to have to carry them both.

"Let's go," he says, after pulling hard and not bringing it down on their heads. He holds out his shield arm and Maria thinks, once again, about all the things that are not covered in basic training.

"Orange button," she says, and then his arm is holding her tightly against him, and they are flying.

The gunshots fade beneath them, but the swearing at their escape is rather creative, and then they reach the hook and jerk to a stop. They hang there, Maria clinging to Captain Freaking America like she's in some ridiculous dime store comic.

"Agent Hill?" Rogers asks.

"Can you make that door there?" Maria asks, peering through the gloom at what used to be the level four elevator doors.

"Yes," he says. "Careful, this might hurt."

He kicks off the back wall and they careen towards the door. He hits it the only way he can: shield first, with Maria sandwiched between metal and man. They break through, and damn, he wasn't kidding when he said it would hurt. He lets her go the instant they're on the floor, and she rolls up on all fours, coughing and aching, and trying to breathe.

"Hill?" he says, concerned this time.

"One minute," she says. She's not coughing up blood. That's probably a good sign. After three more breaths her ribs stop feeling like they're going to squeeze shut on her lungs, and she decides she's good to go.

"Okay," she says. "They're three levels down and it's going to take them a while to get up here. We should send for reinforcements and then hole up somewhere. There are plenty of rooms on this level, and a couple of them lock from the inside."

"Works for me," he says.

"You don't mind hiding?" she says, because she can't resist.

"In a close-quarters gun fight, being Captain America isn't that much of an advantage," he points out. "And there were a lot of them. Better to pick a good spot and fill the doorway with them if they try to breach."

"Hopefully it won't come to that," she says.

She's holding her gun, and she detaches the grappler to reholster it. She has four mags left and a couple of knives in various places. Her heavy coat, and her pack, on the other hand, are three floors away and surrounded by armed thugs. When she exhales she can see her breath. This is a problem.

"Just find the room, agent," Rogers says, bringing her back to their immediate problems.

"Right," Maria says.

She takes out her emergency beacon, the one that will tell Fury they need help, and activates it. It's Stark tech, so it works even though they're in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by rock. There are some advantages to collaborating with the Avengers. If this was SHIELD issue, they'd have to get outside and hope for clear skies.

"This way, Captain," she says, and leads him into the warren of rooms that make up this level.

The first time Maria came here, she was a newly minted agent and she truly believed that SHIELD was doing the right thing. When she'd seen this floor in action, full of test subjects and bright with fluorescent lights, she'd almost quit on the spot. She'd stayed, though, because Nick Fury had seen the look in her eyes and promised her that if she stuck with him, things would change.

And they had. Sometimes it felt like things had changed so much she'd lose direction. Right now, she feels like things haven't changed at all.

"These are cells," Rogers says. "I thought you said this was a lab."

"It was a lab," she says, all clipped edges.

Rogers is looking at the cells, and she knows it's only a matter of time before he puts it all together.

"These cells weren't for holding animals, were they?" he asks, so quietly that she wouldn't hear the anger in this voice, if it hadn't also been in hers.

"Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to, Captain," she says.

"I don't want to," he says. "But I think I should."

"Wait until we're settled," she says. "This one, I think."

It's an internal observation room, so it locks from the inside, and if they hide in the corner, they won't be seen by someone looking through the window. The glass is bullet proof (and more), and if the door is breached, the bad guys still won't be able to come at them more than one at a time.

Rogers pushes the door shut and locks it. He sets his shield down on the old bones of a desk, and Maria begins to pace. She's not anxious, but she's cold. Moving around will help.

"It's you, of course," she says. "It's always you, with SHIELD. One experiment, one time, and they'll never stop trying to recreate it."

Rogers doesn't say anything, but his shoulders are tight, and his hands are fists inside their gauntlets.

"It was awful," she says. "We stopped it."

"You stopped it _here_," he says. "It went on."

"And Fury will never stop fighting to make it go away," she says. "And neither will I."

Later, Maria will realize that this is the moment when, against all her better judgement, she joined the Avengers.

"Those guys down there," he says after a moment, "they're here for information. For some smashed up old hard – " he looks for the word " – drive. Imagine how pleased they'll be when they realized they got the real boy."

"Our back up will be here by then," Maria says. "We just have to last until then."

"Your hands are blue," he points out. "Come here."

He puts his arms around her again, with her hands between them. She feels marginally less likely to freeze to death. He sighs, slumping back against the desk, and her hair ruffles.

Definitely not covered in basic training.

* * *

TBC…


	3. Chapter 3

A whole hour passes before Maria realizes that she is shivering. She's standing the circle of Rogers's arms, which stopped being awkward after about three seconds when she realized that he was warm and then went right back to being awkward three seconds later when she realized he was…well, warm.

She thinks she might feel better if he was talking. If this was Stark (and she is very, very glad this isn't Stark), he would keep up a running commentary about the entire experience, and she would hate it, but at least she be able to focus on how aggravating his voice gets when he's baiting her. Rogers says nothing, and she thinks about his arms and his shoulders and, when her mind drifts sufficiently, she thinks about how she doesn't actually mind that there are armed commandos at all, because it's led to this.

Those thoughts are typically followed by an abrupt turn back into professionalism, but as she gets colder, it's harder to pay attention.

"This isn't working," says Rogers.

"What?" says Maria, and then she is very grateful she didn't say something like 'I know'.

"I'm starting to cool down a bit as well," he tells her. "And you've been shivering for a while now. This isn't enough."

"Oh," she says, mostly inside her own head but probably a little bit out loud too, because she's distracted.

He lets her go, and the drop in temperature is immediate. It's like being hit by cold water or a stiff breeze, and she realizes how cold she's been the whole time, without being aware of it. She wraps her arms around herself and sticks her hands under her arms.

Rogers surveys the room, and then takes her elbow and pulls her over to the corner. They'll be able to see out of the observation room window, and they'll have a clear line to the door. Rogers presses his shoulders up against the wall and sinks down, his legs extending impossible far from the wall once he's sitting because he's too tall to sit cross legged.

"C'mere," he says.

He's still wearing his mask, so she can't tell if he's blushing, and her skin is already red from cold, so it doesn't matter if she does either. He pulls her down so that her back rests against his chest, and she is sitting in what could, theoretically, be considered his lap, except she's actually sitting on the floor. Her thermal pants are enough to prevent the cold of the concrete from seeping into her bones, and when Rogers wraps his arms around her again, the relief from the chill is so sudden that she almost cries.

"I'm sorry about all this," Rogers says.

"I really don't think it's your fault, Captain Rogers," she says. "I'm the one who set my pack down right before we were attacked."

"You needed both hands," he points out. "I could have held it for you."

"Then you wouldn't have had your gun," she reminds him. "And we'd probably be dead."

"Good point," he allows.

"Let's just agree to blame the bad guys, and leave some things out when we write our report for Fury," she says. She's almost laughing, in spite of everything, and it makes her feel warmer for a moment.

"Agreed," he says, though she suspects his agreement is less to keep Fury from finding out, and more to prevent Stark from reading it after he hacks the file. "You can probably call me Steve now, though," he says after a moment. "I mean, we're teammates anyway and we're…here."

She doesn't think calling him by his given name is going to help her maintain her professional façade, but it does seem silly to cling to formality given their current situation. Given the fact that there are other things to which she would rather cling. She steps on that thought pretty fast.

"So cold bothers Captain America?" she asks.

"Cold bothers Steve Rogers," Steve says. "Captain America is usually moving pretty quickly and tends not to focus on that kind of detail."

"It must be very odd being two people," Maria says, even though it makes her a great deal more comfortable. If Steve is different, then he doesn't have to be an Avenger all the time.

"You get used to it," he says. "The mask helps."

"I wondered if the cold might affect you because of, you know," she hesitates. His arms tighten.

"I don't remember being cold," Steve says.

"Really?" she says.

"In the ice. All those years. I don't remember it," he says. He relaxes again, and his breath slides past her ear. She shivers and it has nothing to do with the cold. "So don't worry, agent. I'm not about to have a traumatic flashback."

"Well that's something," Maria says. "Also, if I am going to call you Steve, you can call me Maria. When we're not at work, anyway."

"We're not at work?" he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice. She hadn't meant to do that, to cheer him up. It's not her job.

But they're not at work.

"There's work and there's work," she says. "You work with Tony Stark, so you should understand that."

"That's true enough," Steve says.

He rests his chin on the top of her head, and she tries to come up with a logical reason for him to do that, but she can't. Maybe he gets a better sight line. Maybe he's trying to stay awake. Maybe…

She can't come up with a logical reason to press back against him, either, except that it allows her a better angle to get to her sidearm in a hurry. It's a pretty weak excuse, but she doesn't let that stop her.

* * *

TBC…


	4. Chapter 4

**AN**: Thanks so much for your patience as I finished this! Life, and whatnot.

* * *

It takes another hour for the commandos to breach the floor they're hiding on. Maria can hear them when they exit the stairwell, because they have to blow their way out of it. The old walls shake and crumble a bit, and Steve instinctively throws his shield in front of her and pulls her head down. She knows perfectly well how to protect herself during an explosion, but she can't blame the way he's made, and it's not like her hair can get much more messed up than it already is. The abrupt movement, and the cold, is aggravating the pain in her ribs, but she's not too worried. Her sidearms don't have much in the way of a kick and she's pretty sure she can get Steve to do the bulk of the hand to hand, should it get to that.

"How are we going to play this?" Steve breathes in her ear.

"I think my ribs are going to get really angry if I start moving around," she tells him.

"We should stay here then," he says. "And get them if they breach the door."

"I think we should move to opposite corners, though," she says. "That way you can move out if you have to."

"If you think I'm leaving you here, you clearly didn't spend enough of your childhood reading my comic books," he says.

She huffs a laugh, both trying to stay quiet and trying not to strain her ribs, and draws her gun. The magazine is full and she gets the others out to set beside her, so she doesn't have to reach once the shooting starts. He gets organized as well, shifting behind her to get a better line, but not moving very far away.

"You know," he says, still whispering. She's pretty sure this room used to be soundproof, but it's been a while and it's not like SHIELD has been maintaining the place. "I kind of miss this."

"Fighting people who aren't aliens?" she asks, her gun against her leg and her free hand testing her ribs for weak points in case she has to run.

"Well, yeah, I guess so," he says. She can imagine him grinning. "I don't mind doing that, but sometimes it's nice to just be a soldier again."

"I don't think you'll ever 'just' be anything again," she points out. "Not after what you volunteered for."

"Maybe not," he says. "But it's still good work."

There's another burst of explosions in the hallway, sharper and much more precise. Maria smiles, and braces to push herself up off the floor. Steve follows her, standing close behind her and still battle ready.

"The cavalry?" he asks.

"With bells on, apparently," she replies.

There's a tremendous amount of shouting in the hallway. Maria would like to help, but she has no intention of walking into a firefight, so she settles for moving to the door. She can see through the observation glass as smoke fills the corridor, occasionally lit up by the sizzling electricity that indicates The Widow is deploying her Bite. It's over very quickly.

In the moments of quiet after SHIELD takes apart the infiltration team and before Maria starts moving again, she finally feels awkward about what's happened. This was supposed to be a simple mission, a check-up on a deserted outpost. Hell, she almost came with just one agent as back-up. If Steve hadn't taken it upon himself to get in the jet, she'd probably be coming home in a bag, if they ever found enough of her to send home at all. And then, of course, there's the part where he kept her from freezing to death.

"Thanks," she says. "For coming."

"Any time, Maria." He says her name very deliberately. She can hear the agents in the hallway checking weapons and confirming kills. They really don't have a lot of time left before they have to reveal themselves.

"Well, this has been fun," she says. "But I think I am going to see a doctor now."

"Maria," he says, and takes her hand. "I know you didn't like us, like the Avengers, much when all this started. I'm glad you trust me in the field."

"You're Captain America," she reminds him.

"You trust Steve more, though," he says. He hasn't let go of her hand. He'd held it earlier to keep it warm, but this is different.

"I'm getting used to the idea," she says. "Even if it still makes me uncomfortable."

"It makes me feel uncomfortable too," he says. "When I started being a hero, it took a while for news to get around and if I screwed up, it wasn't so public. Now it's everywhere. Right away. It's pretty much the opposite of what SHIELD stands for."

"I think I've signed up for it now," she says, looking around what's left of an experiment she had deplored.

"Don't worry," he says. "You only have to work with Tony when aliens invade."

She laughs, and it hurts her ribs and the agents in the hall are definitely close enough to hear her since the soundproofing is gone, but she doesn't care. She doesn't care so much that she stands up on her tip toes and kisses Captain Freaking America on the cheek.

"Thank you," she says again, and this time she means 'for saving my life', even though she's pretty sure the feeling is mutual.

"Any time," he echoes, stumbling a bit on it because she hasn't backed away and because this time he is definitely blushing.

She turns towards the door, and he finally relinquishes her hand. He stays very close, though. Looming over the medic Natasha brought and then walking beside her to the jet. He doesn't try to help her, which she appreciates because she's worked hard to make sure she can take care of herself, but once they're finally sitting in the back of a jet and the agents have moved to the front, conceivably so that Maria can rest, he takes her hand again. His gloves are off and so are hers, and once again, it's entirely different.

"So," he says, like it's perfectly natural to go from ordinary mission to near death to huddling for warmth to bizarre new self-understanding on a regular basis. And maybe, just maybe, it is. "Dinner?"

* * *

**finis**

Gravity_Not_Included, October 24, 2012


End file.
